Wireless telephones, which include both cellular telephones and the higher frequency personal communication devices (PCDs), are growing in numbers and also shrinking in size and weight. The growth in numbers is influenced by the convenience and the per call cost of wireless telephones with respect to pagers and wire line telephones or coin telephones for completing calls, especially when the user is away from home or office. The shrinking size is influenced by two related technologies: more efficient receive/transmit processing circuits and higher power density batteries.
Telephone service subscribers with mobile phones do not necessarily want to answer all the telephone calls they receive. Many situations prevent a user from even activating a mobile phone, for example when the user is inside a hospital or at a theater performance. Although mobile phones can be set to vibrate, instead of ring, some users do not want to be interrupted during certain times that occur periodically, for example a weekly church service.
Many times a user forgets to turn his phone off or to change it from ring to vibrate. This often results in embarrassment to the user when the phone rings at an inopportune time. Furthermore, the user may forget to turn the mobile phone back on, and may therefore miss an important call. Thus, prior art mobile phones have a significant drawback. There is therefore a need in the art for an improved method and system for providing automatic/timed silencing of a mobile phone by a telecommunications network.